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воскресенье, 5 октября 2014 г.

Isis is turning us all into its recruiting sergeants

By Owen Jones

Islamic State propaganda
spreads terror and revulsion, so we support the bombing. But we are following
an Isis script

They are fleeing Latifiya – a
city just outside Baghdad – in their thousands. A few months ago, it had a
population of 200,000, but now only 50,000 remain. This is a town of horror.
According to Human Rights Watch , Islamist militias are summarily executing
civilians. People are being taken out of cars, ordered to kneel on the
pavement, and then shot in the head. On 11 June, 137 men were seized from the
town’s Um Weilha market. Thirty bodies have so far been recovered; the fate of
the others remains a mystery.

More compelling evidence of the
need for western air power to pummel these barbarians, you might think. But the
persecutors here are not Islamic State (Isis). They are Shia fighters under the
control of the former, western-backed prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose
violent sectarianism did so much to fuel the rise of Isis. They are murdering
and torturing Sunni Muslims, victims whose lives have been deemed to be of no
significance. As Human Rights Watch points out, “their stories are falling on
deaf ears”. No white westerners were forced to recite chilling messages in
professionally made videos before being murdered, so no horror is expressed by
western politicians. There aren’t ever louder and more irresistible calls to
“do something”; there are no parallel denunciations of opponents of western
intervention as deluded peaceniks or heartless isolationists.

None of this is to understate
the barbarity of Isis. A confession: I’ve had nightmares about it and have
spoken to friends who have too. It gets to you, Isis – it’s running what must
be one of the most sophisticated programmes of psychological warfare mounted by
a terrorist group in history. Partly through a social media campaign that is
more advanced than those run by many corporations, it is transforming us into
its recruiting sergeants.

We grow more terrified of it;
we express our terror, and so help to spread it. Western media compete over
inflammatory language to express the evil of Isis, and add to its almost
otherworldly, terrifying mystique – a mystique Isis has depended on to conquer
large swaths of Iraq and Syria, because its opponents are left too frightened
to resist. Stills of its videos are plastered on front pages, and vicious
anti-Muslim diatribes are posted on Twitter – which must delight Isis: the more
hatred of Muslims ratchets up, the better chance it has of winning support.

Some belated realisation that
we are simply following Isis’s script is filtering through. This week’s
Independent on Sunday front page
featured white text on black, defiantly refusing to display Isis
propaganda. Social media abounds with calls to share pictures of the murdered
Salford taxi driver Alan Henning hugging a Syrian child to showcase his
kindness, rather than his last moments, as Isis would want. We agonise over
what to call the jihadis: why should we call them Islamic State, as they would
wish, when they are neither?

The fact is, we are playing the
part Isis has written for us in an even more profound way. “We must do
something” has too often proved to be the cry of a man pouring a can of petrol
over a burning home. Isis knows that, which is why it is doing everything it
can to incite western intervention. “Is this all you are capable of doing in
this campaign of yours?” mocks the spokesperson Abu Muhammad al-Adnani . “Are
America and all its allies unable to come down to the ground?”

A British jihadi has called for
the UK to “send all your forces” so Isis can “send them all back in coffins”.
In the upsetting propaganda videos he has made under duress, the British
hostage John Cantlie says Isis cannot be defeated by air power, but only with
ground forces. As General Jonathan Shaw – the former assistant chief of the
defence staff – says : “What possible advantage is there to Isil [Isis] of
bringing us into the campaign? Answer: to unite the Muslim world against the
Christian world. We played into their hands. We’ve done what they wanted us to
do.”

Far from stemming its advance –
aside from limited early achievements, particularly recapturing Mosul Dam –
since the bombs began to fall, Isis has continued its onward march. Heet, near
Baghdad, is believed to have fallen; Isis could already be within artillery
range of the capital; and it appears to be on the verge of seizing the northern
Syrian town of Kobani. In the initial phase of bombing, Isis is believed to
have added 6,000 recruits to its ranks.
Its “growing online support intensified” after the bombing raids, says the FBI
director, James Comey . The al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front abandoned its
hostilities with Isis, calling for an alliance to take on the Americans. Last
Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban declared their support for Isis and called for
their sympathisers to join its struggle. Isis is stronger now than it was
before the bombs began to fall.

So what can be done? At the
moment, many Iraqi Sunni Muslims prefer Isis to the sectarian Shia militias.
Until that is addressed through a process of national reconciliation and by
integrating the Sunni minority – reversing the damage done by Maliki-style
sectarianism – little will change. Jihadis have previously been turfed out by
Sunni tribes, but there must be confidence in what replaces Isis.

Murderous Shia militias must be
dismantled. Kurdish peshmerga must, undoubtedly, be properly armed. The
western-backed dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar must be
compelled to crack down on the funding networks that are helping to sustain
Isis and other terrorists. As General Jonathan Shaw says, these western client
states must stop exporting the Wahhabi/Salafist ideology that underpins jihadi
terrorists everywhere. Economic sanctions – and certainly arms embargoes – must
result from non-compliance. External military intervention in Iraq and Syria
must be led by regional powers, not by western forces as Isis craves.

Will common sense prevail?
Unlikely, given the more-than-understandable revulsion that has swept Britain
and beyond since the brutality against Alan Henning. But that, of course, is
what Isis intends.

We cannot bomb an ideology out
of existence. One can only imagine the satisfaction among Isis’s ranks that we
are following a script that it has written to the letter.

Facts from History

CEDAW

UNSCR 1325

Strategy for engagement and joint actions on confidence building and P2P diplomacy that involve women. Final Report

YOUTH PEACE PLAN OF GEORGIA

This publication is produced within the framework of the project - ‘‘Support Democratic Participation of Young Women in Building Peace and Stability in Georgia’’ implemented in Georgia by International Network for Civil Development - INCD in partnership with Young Women Experts’ Network for Peace and Security (YWEPS) and with the financial support of the Embassy of Canada through Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).